April's Last Moments
by whirlwind94
Summary: You wonder if you’re going crazy, like Ophelia. Did she have so many thoughts rushing through her mind? Did she smile as she sank into the water, or was she frightened? April compares herself to Hamlet's Ophelia in her final moments. 2nd Person. Oneshot.


**Author's Note- First time I've ever written April, and the first time I've ever written in 2****nd**** person… so we'll see how it goes, what kind of reviews I get. **

**But I've found so many fics featuring April and her suicide; it almost seemed to a coming of age story for RENT-writers. I think maybe the reason it's so popular is that because so little information is given about April that writers get to imagine her differently, and can play out this grotesque fantasy in any way they like. Anyways, I decided to give it a go.**

**Disclaimer- It's all Jonathon Larson's, not mine at all. A bit of Shakespeare thrown in, so the Bard gets credit, too.**

**April compares herself to Hamlet's Ophelia in her last minutes. Oneshot, and my first time writing in 2****nd**** person.**

You slam the bathroom door shut quickly, then immediately regret it. You hope the guys didn't hear the desperate way it slammed.

You listen for a moment, waiting to see if Mark or Roger noticed, if they'll come check on you. They don't. For a moment their lack of concern stings, but then you shrug off your hurt. You suppose it's for the better. You wouldn't want them to notice your absence yet, not for a while at least. Not until it's too late. Your shaking fingers twist the lock into place, and then you turn against the door, slumping against the wood, sliding to the floor. You reach into your back pocket and pull out your pack of cigarettes. With still quivering fingers, you light it (not without difficulty) and take a deep drag off of the cigarette. Smoking indoors, in an enclosed space like the bathroom? You ask yourself. What, do you want to suffocate? Then you bitterly remind yourself- doesn't matter, because you're dying anyways.

You're dying.

After inhaling some more smoke, you gather the courage to get up and finally look at yourself in the mirror. Your anxious eyes search for a difference, a perceptible change to confirm what the paper folded up tight in your back pocket says- that you're dying. Maybe your face looks thinner- though that could just be from the heroin you've been doing for months now, you never really noticed before. Perhaps your skin is paler, or your face looks more worn… still, all these things could've been there yesterday! You don't know. It's hard to say because you haven't looked at yourself this closely in a long time. You cough. The cigarette is still smoking, and, waving a hand to get the smoke away from your face, you crush it in the sink.

There's smoke inside you, blackening your lungs, and there's a disease within you, rushing through your veins. You exhale and the smoke is gone from your system, but the blood you're stuck with. There's no way of getting it out.

Your eyes land on your razor. It's dirty, a little bit rusted from sitting on the same spot on the counter, wet from splashes of water from the sink. You haven't shaved your legs in over a week because you always wear jeans now. You've been neglecting your hygiene for weeks now, just living from fix to fix.

You look around, eyes darting, and then you set your resolve. You reach for your shaving razor, and still clutching it in your hand, start the bath. Now that you've made up your mind, everything else seems so simple. Calmly start the bath. Proceed. You start to slip off your clothes, then realize that someone will find you- you don't know who, and for an instant you imagine Mark walking in on your naked body, horrified- so perhaps it would be better if you left your clothes on.

As you sink into the tub, you wish for an absurd moment that you were wearing a dress. A beautiful old-fashioned dress, and you wish you had flowers in your hair because you remember a quote from Hamlet. You used to love Shakespeare, you used to buy battered paperback copies of his plays and read them out loud. Roger used to love hearing you read all the different voices for each part, and sometimes he'd play with you, reading the lines, stumbling over the Elizabethan English phrases. You'd be laughing as you both got into character. There was a young woman in Hamlet, with a name like… like Sophie, or Sophia…. Ophelia! You remember weeping the first time you read Hamlet, because she had killed herself, fallen into the river clutching flowers. She had gone mad after Hamlet rejected her.

Then you shake your head to bring yourself back to reality. This shitty reality you're stuck with. You're still holding the razor, and you pull down your sleeves, exposing your pale skin. You glance at the track marks dismissively, then suddenly turn a sharper eye on them. Which one was _the one_? Which one was from a dirty needle, which one put you in this situation in the first place? But, you mustn't try to put off the blame. You got yourself in this situation. Now it's time to get yourself out. You stop inspecting your arms and grip the razor, taking a breath.

Here goes.

It's not too hard at first- you used to cut in high school, when the yelling voices at home were too much and you needed fast relief. But that was nothing compared to this. Those were shallow little scratches, not even leaving scars. This? This is something else entirely.

You have to grit your teeth and press hard and fast as you move the blade over and over your inner forearms. You start to cry. You want it to be _over_ already, you don't want to have to feel the torn skin and the cool sting of metal or the warm wet blood, burning and slippery on your arms. Your whole arm is a throbbing red mess, and you bite your lip, biting back a whimper of pain. Letting out a quiet, strangled sob, you take the razor in your right hand to begin on your other arm, and it's easier this time because you have less control. Because you're not right-handed, it only takes a few forceful jabs of motion, and your left arm is as slashed up as your right one, bleeding lines marking your arms from your wrist to the inside of your elbow.

_Ouch. Shit, it hurts so bad._

She had it easy. Ophelia, she just slipped into the water and drowned, no mess. Not like this.

You tilt your head back in the bathtub, letting your arms sink into the warm bathwater. The red moves into pink now, spreading, spreading like swirls of smoke in the air- but it's not smoke in the air (like the cigarette smoke, stifling in this small room). It's blood. It's blood in the water. Your blood- poisoned blood.

You wish this scene was more romantic, and think for a moment that maybe this was something Mark would've wanted to get on film. You feel bad for him because he's trying so hard to capture your lives with his camera, like there are some sorts of special memories. Like he's trying to pay tribute to this chaotic, hellish life you're all living. The sad thing is, there is no poetry, no beauty in this life- it's painful and harsh and unbearably cruel. Not like Shakespeare wrote it.

Suddenly- you're dizzy, its dark and you wish you weren't alone. It hurts and you're frightened, and you're all alone. You wish Collins was here to gather you in his big arms, reassuring and proving by example that you could live like this, survive with this virus. You wish Mark would notice your absence and check on you (though he hadn't noticed much lately, you were always going in and out with Roger, to clubs, to the streets, to your drug dealer) or even his loud girlfriend, that Maureen.

Or maybe even Roger, with his wild smile and green eyes- but how the hell could you face him, knowing that you had given him HIV, had infected him, had sentenced him to death?

You wonder if you're going crazy. Crazy like Ophelia. Did she have so many thoughts rushing through her mind, each one more dismal and crushing than the last? Did she smile as she sank into the water, or was she frightened? You're frightened.

You let out another gasp, because you're feeling empty, like it doesn't hurt anymore, like you're beyond the pain. You want someone to find you.

But before you can move or call anyone, it's all spinning, the darkened edges creeping in, spinning away like those blood swirls of red, down the drain.

"…When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;  
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;  
As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and indued  
Unto that element: but long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,  
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death."  
Act IV, Scene VII


End file.
